Gadgetory

the conventional wisdom in the car biz is that nobody's shopping for a mid class export ever cross shops stuff from Detroit certainly not a Buick that makes GM all red and angry so they decide to do something about it here's the 2012 LaCrosse let's take it for a spin check the perceptions and check the tech before I take you inside first a note about the looks trust me when I tell you this car doesn't photograph or shoot well I've never seen a good picture or video clip of it let our shooters fault you're a good guy Jim it just doesn't look good on imaging products I don't know why now here's what doesn't look good these faux hood vents yes I know they're kind of vintage Roadmaster DNA but Buick don't put them on here leave that for the customer to get it Pep Boys and stick over here with some double-stick tape now I got to give it to Buick right off the bat this interior is not to my liking it's not my taste kind of gaudy in a modern Las Vegas hotel way but it's really well done if this is your goal they've nailed the goal that's one of the great integrations in terms of look and color and style of instrument panel - LCD head unit right away your eyes drawn to this beautiful 8 inch touch LCD one issue is because you've got the lay back - which really opens this room up you do have a long reach to the screen if I'm here in my seat and by the way I'm pushed way up for shooting purposes I can't reach that and I've got kind of long arms and if I have my seat where I really Drive forget it navigation looks great on this guy it's in there in the class with Toyota and BMW and some others but here's where things start to get annoying you can get navigation or you can get there IntelliLink telematics and app-based connected head unit you can't get both that's a bad decision to have to make until a link is basically GM's sync killer with advanced natural language voice control for calls and media and app based support for Pandora streaming radio and stitcher audio podcasts with hopefully more apps to follow soon I've got my smart phone all paired up I've got Bluetooth hands-free of course but I don't have bluetooth streaming that's fast becoming a must-have in a car these days and it ain't here now unfathomably for a car in this class the base model doesn't have bluetooth hands-free falling back instead on OnStar calling which is lame if they're trying to appeal to a younger audience than Buick normally would now like so many cars you've got a lockout going on here is when the car is moving a lot of things like address entry for navigation go gray for safety so then you would drop back to your voice command turn-by-turn directions all right now say plan wold directory or store plan route I'm sorry to use the plan route command you need to have stored destinations to get a route now please push the blue OnStar button and all I can get to via voice are these dopey turn-by-turn directions from the OnStar Operations Center I don't want that I want to talk to my in-car navigation and nicely color-keyed to the rest of the stuff on the dash very nice and you also get a blind spot indicator system for that but it won't keep you out of trouble if you're drifting into someone's path now intelligently they have not a light foot gauge but a momentum gauge what I mean by that is the Eco gauge of so many cars have these days this one shows when you're either accelerating too hard or if you're braking too hard both are bad for cars when you're trying to get the maximum efficiency out of the energy that's a very smart way to show it up in the engine bay not a pretty thing 2.4 liter inline-4 with some great tech direct injection it's a very modest capacity for a car of this size but it's got what they call a belt alternator starter hybrid system a mild hybrid you get electric motor boost by that belt pulling on the crank pulley it's kind of crude stuff and we saw this in the Chevy Malibu hybrid it was kind of embarrassing but they've really refined it and now it's a super smart system this whole apparatus gets this car something like 25 or 30 percent better efficiency and it's not terribly complicated the numbers 182 horsepower 172 foot-pounds of torque we've got 9.2 or so as the zero to 60 perfectly adequate and 25 36 mpg but I want you to experience how this car performs on the road in terms of cohesion it's very interesting come on now as you know I particularly like cars they do what they set out to do whatever that may be and I think the LaCrosse does that first of all this little putt-putt motor is very small but doesn't come off as puny you can tell it's a four that's doing its damndest through technology to move this car well but it does move this car well this may also be one of the best matings of engine transmission and electronic control unit that I've driven in a year or two the shift points the torque load from the engine applied to that transmission when it's shifting are really nice now on the downside this is not a responsive car in terms of having sporting power you get the v6 for that and the handling is a little wallowing it's an understeering proposition to be sure but most consumers don't know what understeering is let alone why it should bother them oh one of the small things there is no visibility in this car this is the biggest a pillar I think I've ever seen you can lose another car there easily let alone a kid on a bike that's a serious problem and the same thing in the back that rear package shelf rises up to meet these chunky sea pillars and you may as well just cross your fingers and listen for the crunch all right how do we do it across seen that style start off base about 31 grand deliver then you've got this Sophie's Choice and telelink their apps platform or navigation to me it's pretty easy since the navigation has been crippled by the legal team goodbye I'm going to option this guy with a package that will include IntelliLink and I'm gonna clip my Android phone on the windshield to get navigation beyond that the confidence package is intriguing it's about 1,400 bucks but it gives you a really good quality head-up display and the blind spot technology if you're into that you